February Summary and Strategy

Hello everyone!

Below is a brief summary of our progress in February. Thanks to Bence, Balint, Anya, and Cath for joining yesterday’s meeting; it was a pleasure to catch up and chat!

Here’s the recording in case you’re interested in rewatching or reading through an AI summary.

TL;DR

• We’re stabilizing Deep Work financially and leveraging design work to expand into organizational strategy.

• Keeping the public reports (like this one) and publishing editorial content to build industry credibility.

• Focusing on web3 design community engagement through conferences, workshops, and public-facing material.

• Starting the work on a peer-to-peer skill attestation protocol. Literature review on PKM and app development.

• Andrej personally collaborates with early-stage projects on business transparency and documentation to increase funding opportunities.

Financial Stability & Business Strategy

• I have sold most of Deep Work’s Bitcoin holdings to maintain financial stability and ensure at least a year’s runway without being affected by crypto market volatility. Volatility is most likely to increase due to uncertainty and bold/reactive political moves.

• We are focusing on generating revenue through product/UX, brand, and marketing design as a way to expand into organizational design work in the future.

• Based on the recent client calls, our flexible approach and peer-verified talent network seem to be a key differentiator, allowing clients to extend their in-house team on an ad-hoc basis and offering flexibility at a competitive cost. If you’re interested, here is our latest draft for a deck with our offering.

Business Development

• We are increasing our client outreach and partnerships, with an ideal focus on essential infrastructure companies. We spoke to four different teams who need design help and are interested in working with us (see above), and we are still in conversation with them. Anna was is our first official Ambassador!

• We should refine our internal processes to streamline roles, reduce documentation bloat, and improve operational efficiency once we start getting paid projects.

• Once we have one of the current prospects start a collaboration, I will also register a Delaware LLC. This will make it easier for us to make software payments (in fiat) and be more transparent with financial details.

• I’m personally exploring bridging the gap between projects and funders, guiding early-stage projects in better business documentation and milestone setting to improve their transparency and attractiveness for investment. This helps investors discover better projects and elevates otherwise invisible but meaningful (non-extractive) projects.

Public Education

• As mentioned in the last newsletter, I started publishing a series of editorial articles on Web3, product design, and infrastructure development, starting with "The Unrealised Dream of a New Economy."

• A majority of the recent inbound clients came through referrals from designers in web3. We’ll keep creating educational content for them and increase our presence at conferences.

• We’re planning our schedule for IRL events and conferences, aiming to host talks and workshops on design and other relevant topics. We can continue the discussion in Discord. The full list of Ethereum related events is here, currently on our list are:

  • EthCluj

  • Protocol Berg

  • EthCC Cannes

  • EthTokyo

  • Devconnect Buenos Aires

Peer-to-Peer Skill Attestation Project

• A few of us have been reviewing existing social science literature on personal knowledge management (notes here) to create a credible foundation for a whitepaper.

• We have a small team to develop a front-end app (session recordings here) as a use case for the skill attestation protocol. The app is designed to help users organize personal notes, develop their skills, and receive peer validation to navigate complexity in times of information overload. Future sessions will be on the community calendar.

• I’m following BlockScience’s modeling process workshops to refine the design approach.

Remember, you can follow our internal calendar for upcoming public online events and meetings and join our conversations on Discord. The next meeting in early April will be announced in Discord and show up on the calendar.

Have a lovely start to the month!

Andrej